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Jul. 1st, 2021 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
babydracoFIC: No Mistakes 1/2
The end of Guns N Roses as told as if it was the breakup of a marriage between Axl and Female!Slash (the same version who appeared in my previous Chicago 7 crossover fic November Rain).
For Slash in her 30s, I'm kinda fancasting Jessica Szohr with much much bigger hair? IDK.
While all the incidents I describe re Slash and Steven's early experiences are entirely made up, it's apparently canon that the characters mentioned did become sexually active that young (not afawk with each other, but in general).
I left off where I did, because I'd really be interested in giving Slash a new love interest, but I don't know who I'm going to pick (or if it'll be a real person or an OC). I'm really trying to avoid character bashing here or over exaggerating the situation. Axl's being a jerk like he was genuinely capable of being, but I also feel really really bad for him.
My title is inspired by Patty Smyth's 1992 song “No Mistakes”. But this title might be changed. I'm also not sure how often she should be referred to as Slash (does he call himself Slash in his own head?) This won't be going up on A03 for awhile yet bc I have a lot of other things to do. I can't promise this story will have any actual sex in it, either. I don't know yet.
Warnings for references to domestic abuse, revenge porn and underage sex (including prostitution).
“Why the Hell did you have me served with a restraining order?” Axl barked unceremoniously over the phone. “Where's my son?”
“With my mother.”
“Are you leaving me for Duff? Is it because he's taller?”
Yeah...your height was always the problem between us. And why was it always Duff? Maybe because he knew Duff would definitely treat her better. And the height thing. Plus, who else from the original band was even left besides them? But she couldn't even consider that, even if he interested her, right now she had to do triage on her life. She'd already got herself her own lawyer, a new manager, a new publicist (who'd sent out the carefully worded press release) and lined up a couple of interviews with carefully selected media. She didn't want to do any interviews, but she had to get out in front of this and tell her side of the story first. She'd also been quietly moving some of her assets out of his reach. Although she wasn't perfect or blameless in this situation (they'd all become spoiled junkies who were hard to live with), a lot of their friends had come to her privately and said if she got out, they'd stand by her. Axl had burnt a lot of bridges with their peers.
“I'm not leaving you for anyone, I'm just leaving.” Another guy would try to apologize here, beg to know what she wanted, offer anything. Axl would only double down. “I want child support and alimony and the other beach house.”
“If you think I'm letting an addict get sole custody of-”
“It's not like you ever wanted the kid. Don't talk to me again unless it's through my lawyer.”
And she hung up.
“But he's right,”Sasha admitted at her mother's kitchen table, after two weeks of alternately sleeping and crying and fighting with her husband. This would have gone so much quicker and easier if there was no marriage and no kid, just a band to dissolve. “I can't take care of a three year old if I can't take care of myself.”
The baby was in the living room, listlessly watching a puppet show on Nick Jr. None of this was his fault. She was stupid, and pathetic, couldn't even pull herself together enough to be a proper mother, something any idiot could do, as Axl kept reminding her. You were too stoned to get your birth control shot, the shot we put you on because you couldn't remember to take your pill, it's your fault we even have him now.. He must love his son, but the idea of parenthood terrified him, considering his own past. In typical Axl fashion, he made that everyone else's problem.
“You need to get into a program, we almost lost you for real. Axl 's going to win custody, but I can take care of my own grandbaby until he does.”
“Mom, you don't-” The baby toddled in, he knew to go straight to Nana instead of Mommy and tug on her skirt,using his little fingers to sign 'please' in ASL. Ola correctly guessed he wanted another Capri Sun and grabbed one from the fridge. She tousled his puffy hair, he whispered 'fank you'. His language skills were improving after the diagnosis of fifty percent hearing loss. She blamed herself for that too, maybe it was the drugs that did this to him.
“It's what women like us do.” When the system was designed to take your men from you because it didn't value their commitment to their families or even their lives, you did what you had to do to keep each other close.
“He had other women. Not the groupies, who cares about that. Real other women. Ones he went on dates with, and bought presents. He had affairs.” One rule for him, another for her. He'd drive off all the male groupies, kept them from getting near her. She'd tried it with female groupies but Axl ruined it, he always wanted to watch and that got old and demeaning quickly. She'd started doing even more drugs, because she was bored and lonely at all their endless stupid fucking parties. Sasha had tried cheating on him with a couple of his friends. She remembered that time on her hotel balcony, off the beach in Bali, another man's guitar calloused hands untying the strings of her yellow bikini bottoms. She'd known Axl might be watching, and he was, he stormed off that night, stranding her in a foreign country. When she got home, they'd had a huge fight, followed by spectacular fucking on the stairs, and Axl on good behavior for awhile. But over time, he'd started running out of friends she could pull that with.
His possessiveness reached ridiculous heights.
“He got jealous when I hung out with Michael Jackson!” Sasha had argued in the divorce mediation.
“So?” Axl snapped.
“Yeah, Michael Jackson, there's a guy coming to steal your woman!”
Or, maybe in that one case, he knew it was silly to find Jackson a threat, and his reason for not wanting them to be friends was based on not wanting anyone else to notice what other things they had in common. He made her second guess even simple things like who she was friends with.
Once the music started falling apart, that was her sign. She no longer had to pretend she needed to save her marriage to protect the band. The band was clearly over too.
“Go shower, wash your hair and I'll dry it for you after,” Ola said. These days, Sasha often had to be prompted to do these things, or even helped by one of the band's minders. The shower did make her feel a little better. She came out, sitting on the living room carpet while her mother scrunched her curls dry with an old t shirt. The baby was playing with some of her old Barbies, while a Japanese cartoon about robots was on in the background.
“How did you do it?” She asked.
“Well, we weren't famous, there weren't paparazzi camped outside the house, strangers judging our every move. And I never had to file a restraining order against your dad, he was never violent.”
Sasha cringed. It was an open secret among their friends that some of the fights had got violent, but she hadn't realized her mother knew. She didn't have the energy to make excuses this time or try to explain that it wasn't what it sounded like, while her mother looked at her disbelievingly. Mostly, Axl was mean and manipulative, he always knew just where to hit emotionally to make someone feel worthless. He yelled, throwing hair trigger tantrums, destroying their stuff while she cried and begged him to stop. He'd insist during calmer moments, that he had been more interested in hurting himself. But it was clear, this was just as much a punishment for her, and Sasha would rather he'd straight up slap her.
Other rock wives had gone through situations like this. But she'd also never thought of herself as a 'rock wife', she wasn't some chick, she was in the band. Sasha regretted not taking more time to get to know those women. If she reached out, would it be welcome at this point? Could she have ever got along with, for example, Courtney if their husbands had been able to get along better? Eh, probably not.
Her mom worked in the backstage side of the industry, dressing these people, so she knew all about the arrogance, selfishness, violence and misogyny involved in the music world. She knew Sasha was entering a rough world full of men who were often rewarded for bad behavior. But she hadn't interfered, because Sasha was in love with rock'n roll and in love with Axl. She hadn't said anything like 'I told you so' now, either,despite years of watching her daughter become increasingly unrecognizable.
Sasha had always had a rebel heart. She'd earned the nickname “Slash” because she couldn't sit still and was always running around. She used to love racing BMX bikes, although there weren't many opportunities for girls. At the start of her relationship with Axl, she gave as good as she got. Until he had her wrapped around his finger, until she was too worn down and strung out to. And maybe someone should have seen it coming, her terrible taste in men.
She'd always been a pretty girl. But once she reached about thirteen, grown men started eyeing her. Her mother would give them dirty looks and step between them, they scared her, but Sasha also kind of liked the way they made her feel like a real grown woman. They looked...hungry. Daddy didn't like it, when his friends stood too close to her or tried to 'playfully' cuddle with her. But Daddy left them because he didn't want his family anymore, so she didn't care how he felt.
She'd said this confidently to Stevie, hand on her hip, smoking a cigarette and trying not to cough. This made perfect sense to her at the time.
She and Stevie used to give bjs for $50 to rich guys in their cars, parked out behind all the fancy restaurants. They took turns playing lookout. He'd been her first, too, after she'd fallen off her skateboard and was trying not to cry, they'd gone back to her bedroom while her mother and grandma were out. He'd done it before a couple of times (she didn't ask with who, she didn't want to know) and he'd tried to be a real gentleman about it. She was hungry after, and he heated up leftover mac and cheese for her. They both knew even back then, that they weren't the love of each other's lives. But you had to have someone to hold hands with at school dances and watch your back in the street.
“You will survive this,” her mother said. She drew a pick through Sasha's curls. “You've had setbacks before. Like the time your father caught you working at a strip club.”
“ I wanted Daddy to pay attention to me.” Sasha was just drowsy enough to be honest. All her wild behavior was a child's desperate attempt to make her father ditch his new family and come back. Instead, he'd yelled and grounded her for the rest of that summer, and her mother had backed him up. Mom got her a legit job modeling teen fashions, instead, where the girls were heavily chaperoned. Sasha did that for awhile, attempted art college, worked a day job at a record store. The fashion modeling job got her gigs in a couple of music videos.
She'd always been happy to let her parents think all she'd been doing at that club, was dancing. They didn't know about the first time she tried cocaine, courtesy of a customer. They didn't know about the audition for Biracial Babes 3 (Barely Legal Edition!... which was a lie, she was sixteen). She'd backed out of making the full film, but the audition tape was more than incriminating.
But, another way for a teenage girl to get back at her dad was to start a rock band with her homeless drifter boyfriend and a bunch of their weirdo friends(“like Stevie, Daddy. You remember him?” “Stevie. Right.” Daddy looked like the universe was testing him). He cosigned for a studio apartment after he discovered she and Axl were living in a garage.
She'd been dancing just long enough to learn how to work a crowd. She'd found out, getting up there and playing original music for strangers wasn't that different from taking your clothes off for them. It was almost worse but at least neither job required talking to people.
Music was her first love, the only real way she knew how to express her feelings. She would play her guitar until she had cuts on her fingers. She'd tried writing little songs, and even found girl bands who would let her play real paying gigs with them.
She'd auditioned for permanent roles in other bands, but they always reacted in one of two ways, A) “waiting for your boyfriend, honey?” or B) sure she could join, but she had to prove she was bringing something extra to the table. Like regular sex with whichever guy called dibs when she walked in (fucking Poison, man). The guys who would eventually become GNR, they weren't exactly feminists but they knew her, they knew what she could do. They had a musical chemistry with each other that couldn't be substituted.
Plus, as Stevie had pointed out, she'd let him see everything when they were 13 (it had long ago stopped being a novelty).
She let Axl have her because she wanted him too, more than she'd ever wanted anyone in her short life.
“I should have joined a girl band for real.”
“I don't know if you would have been any safer,” her mother said. “I heard that story about The Runaways.”
“What story?” Sasha asked. Ola told her.
“Wow. Joan Jett was always one of my heroines, and I think I just lost a lot of respect for her.” Maybe she wouldn't have handled that situation any better, though. They were trying to act like the men around them, act like they had cocks, and abandoned other women, that's what they thought they had to do to get a little power and it turned out they still had none.
She was the best female rock guitarist of her generation, and one of the rare women to appear on Top Ten Lead Guitarists of the 20th Century lists, and she was an addict afraid of her own husband, and had few genuine female friends to turn to.
“You know who would be perfect for you? Lenny Kravitz.”
“Yeah, but...” She wasn't wrong, they would be a good couple, if or when, Sasha was ready to date again. “I think he's still married to that chick from The Cosby Show. Anyway, I don't want to date, I want to hide.”
She couldn't avoid going out forever. This dental checkup had been scheduled months ago, she needed to get it done while she still had health insurance. No one bothered her while she was out, but then, she didn't linger either. The light on her mom's answering machine was blinking, indicating a new message. It was Axl, who wasn't supposed to contact her directly.
“Hey, Sasha, I just want you to know I found this interesting video featuring you, that I know you wouldn't want to get out. I'm in the mood for a little negotiation, call me back.”
What could Axl possibly have on her? Unlike Pam and Tommy, they'd never tried to film their sex. She hadn't done anything illegal in years, or said or done anything so damning it could cost her fans and ground in the divorce, like spitting on the flag or shoving a handicapped person down a flight of stairs. What did he....oh god no...there was only one video of her in existence that bad. And somehow, he'd got ahold of it.
The end of Guns N Roses as told as if it was the breakup of a marriage between Axl and Female!Slash (the same version who appeared in my previous Chicago 7 crossover fic November Rain).
For Slash in her 30s, I'm kinda fancasting Jessica Szohr with much much bigger hair? IDK.
While all the incidents I describe re Slash and Steven's early experiences are entirely made up, it's apparently canon that the characters mentioned did become sexually active that young (not afawk with each other, but in general).
I left off where I did, because I'd really be interested in giving Slash a new love interest, but I don't know who I'm going to pick (or if it'll be a real person or an OC). I'm really trying to avoid character bashing here or over exaggerating the situation. Axl's being a jerk like he was genuinely capable of being, but I also feel really really bad for him.
My title is inspired by Patty Smyth's 1992 song “No Mistakes”. But this title might be changed. I'm also not sure how often she should be referred to as Slash (does he call himself Slash in his own head?) This won't be going up on A03 for awhile yet bc I have a lot of other things to do. I can't promise this story will have any actual sex in it, either. I don't know yet.
Warnings for references to domestic abuse, revenge porn and underage sex (including prostitution).
“Why the Hell did you have me served with a restraining order?” Axl barked unceremoniously over the phone. “Where's my son?”
“With my mother.”
“Are you leaving me for Duff? Is it because he's taller?”
Yeah...your height was always the problem between us. And why was it always Duff? Maybe because he knew Duff would definitely treat her better. And the height thing. Plus, who else from the original band was even left besides them? But she couldn't even consider that, even if he interested her, right now she had to do triage on her life. She'd already got herself her own lawyer, a new manager, a new publicist (who'd sent out the carefully worded press release) and lined up a couple of interviews with carefully selected media. She didn't want to do any interviews, but she had to get out in front of this and tell her side of the story first. She'd also been quietly moving some of her assets out of his reach. Although she wasn't perfect or blameless in this situation (they'd all become spoiled junkies who were hard to live with), a lot of their friends had come to her privately and said if she got out, they'd stand by her. Axl had burnt a lot of bridges with their peers.
“I'm not leaving you for anyone, I'm just leaving.” Another guy would try to apologize here, beg to know what she wanted, offer anything. Axl would only double down. “I want child support and alimony and the other beach house.”
“If you think I'm letting an addict get sole custody of-”
“It's not like you ever wanted the kid. Don't talk to me again unless it's through my lawyer.”
And she hung up.
“But he's right,”Sasha admitted at her mother's kitchen table, after two weeks of alternately sleeping and crying and fighting with her husband. This would have gone so much quicker and easier if there was no marriage and no kid, just a band to dissolve. “I can't take care of a three year old if I can't take care of myself.”
The baby was in the living room, listlessly watching a puppet show on Nick Jr. None of this was his fault. She was stupid, and pathetic, couldn't even pull herself together enough to be a proper mother, something any idiot could do, as Axl kept reminding her. You were too stoned to get your birth control shot, the shot we put you on because you couldn't remember to take your pill, it's your fault we even have him now.. He must love his son, but the idea of parenthood terrified him, considering his own past. In typical Axl fashion, he made that everyone else's problem.
“You need to get into a program, we almost lost you for real. Axl 's going to win custody, but I can take care of my own grandbaby until he does.”
“Mom, you don't-” The baby toddled in, he knew to go straight to Nana instead of Mommy and tug on her skirt,using his little fingers to sign 'please' in ASL. Ola correctly guessed he wanted another Capri Sun and grabbed one from the fridge. She tousled his puffy hair, he whispered 'fank you'. His language skills were improving after the diagnosis of fifty percent hearing loss. She blamed herself for that too, maybe it was the drugs that did this to him.
“It's what women like us do.” When the system was designed to take your men from you because it didn't value their commitment to their families or even their lives, you did what you had to do to keep each other close.
“He had other women. Not the groupies, who cares about that. Real other women. Ones he went on dates with, and bought presents. He had affairs.” One rule for him, another for her. He'd drive off all the male groupies, kept them from getting near her. She'd tried it with female groupies but Axl ruined it, he always wanted to watch and that got old and demeaning quickly. She'd started doing even more drugs, because she was bored and lonely at all their endless stupid fucking parties. Sasha had tried cheating on him with a couple of his friends. She remembered that time on her hotel balcony, off the beach in Bali, another man's guitar calloused hands untying the strings of her yellow bikini bottoms. She'd known Axl might be watching, and he was, he stormed off that night, stranding her in a foreign country. When she got home, they'd had a huge fight, followed by spectacular fucking on the stairs, and Axl on good behavior for awhile. But over time, he'd started running out of friends she could pull that with.
His possessiveness reached ridiculous heights.
“He got jealous when I hung out with Michael Jackson!” Sasha had argued in the divorce mediation.
“So?” Axl snapped.
“Yeah, Michael Jackson, there's a guy coming to steal your woman!”
Or, maybe in that one case, he knew it was silly to find Jackson a threat, and his reason for not wanting them to be friends was based on not wanting anyone else to notice what other things they had in common. He made her second guess even simple things like who she was friends with.
Once the music started falling apart, that was her sign. She no longer had to pretend she needed to save her marriage to protect the band. The band was clearly over too.
“Go shower, wash your hair and I'll dry it for you after,” Ola said. These days, Sasha often had to be prompted to do these things, or even helped by one of the band's minders. The shower did make her feel a little better. She came out, sitting on the living room carpet while her mother scrunched her curls dry with an old t shirt. The baby was playing with some of her old Barbies, while a Japanese cartoon about robots was on in the background.
“How did you do it?” She asked.
“Well, we weren't famous, there weren't paparazzi camped outside the house, strangers judging our every move. And I never had to file a restraining order against your dad, he was never violent.”
Sasha cringed. It was an open secret among their friends that some of the fights had got violent, but she hadn't realized her mother knew. She didn't have the energy to make excuses this time or try to explain that it wasn't what it sounded like, while her mother looked at her disbelievingly. Mostly, Axl was mean and manipulative, he always knew just where to hit emotionally to make someone feel worthless. He yelled, throwing hair trigger tantrums, destroying their stuff while she cried and begged him to stop. He'd insist during calmer moments, that he had been more interested in hurting himself. But it was clear, this was just as much a punishment for her, and Sasha would rather he'd straight up slap her.
Other rock wives had gone through situations like this. But she'd also never thought of herself as a 'rock wife', she wasn't some chick, she was in the band. Sasha regretted not taking more time to get to know those women. If she reached out, would it be welcome at this point? Could she have ever got along with, for example, Courtney if their husbands had been able to get along better? Eh, probably not.
Her mom worked in the backstage side of the industry, dressing these people, so she knew all about the arrogance, selfishness, violence and misogyny involved in the music world. She knew Sasha was entering a rough world full of men who were often rewarded for bad behavior. But she hadn't interfered, because Sasha was in love with rock'n roll and in love with Axl. She hadn't said anything like 'I told you so' now, either,despite years of watching her daughter become increasingly unrecognizable.
Sasha had always had a rebel heart. She'd earned the nickname “Slash” because she couldn't sit still and was always running around. She used to love racing BMX bikes, although there weren't many opportunities for girls. At the start of her relationship with Axl, she gave as good as she got. Until he had her wrapped around his finger, until she was too worn down and strung out to. And maybe someone should have seen it coming, her terrible taste in men.
She'd always been a pretty girl. But once she reached about thirteen, grown men started eyeing her. Her mother would give them dirty looks and step between them, they scared her, but Sasha also kind of liked the way they made her feel like a real grown woman. They looked...hungry. Daddy didn't like it, when his friends stood too close to her or tried to 'playfully' cuddle with her. But Daddy left them because he didn't want his family anymore, so she didn't care how he felt.
She'd said this confidently to Stevie, hand on her hip, smoking a cigarette and trying not to cough. This made perfect sense to her at the time.
She and Stevie used to give bjs for $50 to rich guys in their cars, parked out behind all the fancy restaurants. They took turns playing lookout. He'd been her first, too, after she'd fallen off her skateboard and was trying not to cry, they'd gone back to her bedroom while her mother and grandma were out. He'd done it before a couple of times (she didn't ask with who, she didn't want to know) and he'd tried to be a real gentleman about it. She was hungry after, and he heated up leftover mac and cheese for her. They both knew even back then, that they weren't the love of each other's lives. But you had to have someone to hold hands with at school dances and watch your back in the street.
“You will survive this,” her mother said. She drew a pick through Sasha's curls. “You've had setbacks before. Like the time your father caught you working at a strip club.”
“ I wanted Daddy to pay attention to me.” Sasha was just drowsy enough to be honest. All her wild behavior was a child's desperate attempt to make her father ditch his new family and come back. Instead, he'd yelled and grounded her for the rest of that summer, and her mother had backed him up. Mom got her a legit job modeling teen fashions, instead, where the girls were heavily chaperoned. Sasha did that for awhile, attempted art college, worked a day job at a record store. The fashion modeling job got her gigs in a couple of music videos.
She'd always been happy to let her parents think all she'd been doing at that club, was dancing. They didn't know about the first time she tried cocaine, courtesy of a customer. They didn't know about the audition for Biracial Babes 3 (Barely Legal Edition!... which was a lie, she was sixteen). She'd backed out of making the full film, but the audition tape was more than incriminating.
But, another way for a teenage girl to get back at her dad was to start a rock band with her homeless drifter boyfriend and a bunch of their weirdo friends(“like Stevie, Daddy. You remember him?” “Stevie. Right.” Daddy looked like the universe was testing him). He cosigned for a studio apartment after he discovered she and Axl were living in a garage.
She'd been dancing just long enough to learn how to work a crowd. She'd found out, getting up there and playing original music for strangers wasn't that different from taking your clothes off for them. It was almost worse but at least neither job required talking to people.
Music was her first love, the only real way she knew how to express her feelings. She would play her guitar until she had cuts on her fingers. She'd tried writing little songs, and even found girl bands who would let her play real paying gigs with them.
She'd auditioned for permanent roles in other bands, but they always reacted in one of two ways, A) “waiting for your boyfriend, honey?” or B) sure she could join, but she had to prove she was bringing something extra to the table. Like regular sex with whichever guy called dibs when she walked in (fucking Poison, man). The guys who would eventually become GNR, they weren't exactly feminists but they knew her, they knew what she could do. They had a musical chemistry with each other that couldn't be substituted.
Plus, as Stevie had pointed out, she'd let him see everything when they were 13 (it had long ago stopped being a novelty).
She let Axl have her because she wanted him too, more than she'd ever wanted anyone in her short life.
“I should have joined a girl band for real.”
“I don't know if you would have been any safer,” her mother said. “I heard that story about The Runaways.”
“What story?” Sasha asked. Ola told her.
“Wow. Joan Jett was always one of my heroines, and I think I just lost a lot of respect for her.” Maybe she wouldn't have handled that situation any better, though. They were trying to act like the men around them, act like they had cocks, and abandoned other women, that's what they thought they had to do to get a little power and it turned out they still had none.
She was the best female rock guitarist of her generation, and one of the rare women to appear on Top Ten Lead Guitarists of the 20th Century lists, and she was an addict afraid of her own husband, and had few genuine female friends to turn to.
“You know who would be perfect for you? Lenny Kravitz.”
“Yeah, but...” She wasn't wrong, they would be a good couple, if or when, Sasha was ready to date again. “I think he's still married to that chick from The Cosby Show. Anyway, I don't want to date, I want to hide.”
She couldn't avoid going out forever. This dental checkup had been scheduled months ago, she needed to get it done while she still had health insurance. No one bothered her while she was out, but then, she didn't linger either. The light on her mom's answering machine was blinking, indicating a new message. It was Axl, who wasn't supposed to contact her directly.
“Hey, Sasha, I just want you to know I found this interesting video featuring you, that I know you wouldn't want to get out. I'm in the mood for a little negotiation, call me back.”
What could Axl possibly have on her? Unlike Pam and Tommy, they'd never tried to film their sex. She hadn't done anything illegal in years, or said or done anything so damning it could cost her fans and ground in the divorce, like spitting on the flag or shoving a handicapped person down a flight of stairs. What did he....oh god no...there was only one video of her in existence that bad. And somehow, he'd got ahold of it.
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Date: 2021-07-08 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-09 01:14 pm (UTC)